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Handlebar Club

Fashion club in London

The Handlebar Club is an association of aficionados of the handlebar moustache, based in London. The club's sole requirement for membership is "a hirsute appendage of the upper lip and with graspable extremities"; beards are absolutely forbidden. The club engages in activism to assuage discrimination against the handlebarred as well as competitive facial hair tourneys, and has inspired the foundation of transatlantic and Scandinavian counterparts.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1947Founded1

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Michael Attree
Photo: The original uploader was Green fairy at English Wikipedia ., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

The Handlebar Club is an association of aficionados of the handlebar moustache, based in London. The club's sole requirement for membership is "a hirsute appendage of the upper lip and with graspable extremities"; beards are absolutely forbidden. The club engages in activism to assuage discrimination against the handlebarred as well as competitive facial hair tourneys, and has inspired the foundation of transatlantic and Scandinavian counterparts. The club declares itself to be at war with a society that demands people choose "the bland, the boring and the generic"; a club chant includes the proposition that being kissed by a smooth face is akin to "meat without the salt".2

The story

The club was founded in April 1947 in the dressing room of comedian Jimmy Edwards at the Windmill Theatre in London. There were 10 founder members, including Edwards, Raymond Glendenning, and Frank Muir. The minutes of that first meeting are in the Club archives and it appears that although there was a goodly number of founder members they were outnumbered by chorus girls.

The object of the club was, and still is, to bring together moustache wearers (beards being strictly prohibited) socially for sport and general conviviality. The aim of the club was to assist by all means at its disposal, any worthy charity or cause, particularly those devoted to ex-servicemen. This aim still remains today and it has helped particularly with children's charities.

From Wikipedia’s article on Handlebar Club, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 1947Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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